Surviving The Dead
by Stone Shield
Summary: Post 4th War. Naruto is in HotD universe. His idea of retirement and keeping the collected energy of the biju safe. Settled in when corpses start to go for walks. Naruto x Harem. Naruto's stats will be seen through the story, so no peeking as to what he can do.
1. I'm Retired, Dammit!

**Maybe Stories**

By: Stone Shield

Disclaimer: Don't own Naruto or Highschool of the Dead

"Normal Speech"  
"**Demonic Speech**"  
_"Thought"_

* * *

Prologue

It wasn't exactly the cleanest of homes. Quite the opposite actually. Books, scattered or stacked, littered the small apartment. Textbooks, dictionaries, travel guides, and bushels of others that had shared no correlations between them.

CRSH!

The sudden assault of sound, a combination of screeching metal and glass, tore him from his thoughts. The book that he'd been reading, tented on his face, sliding off to fall to the ground, and the small exercise with which he'd let himself become distracted, a pair of swirling orbs of water dancing in the air over his hands, dispelled with his lessened concentration. Blinking, he looked around his small apartment, doing the best he could to discern the sounds that'd woken him from his near-comatose level focus. And trying to convince himself that he wasn't hearing what he thought he was hearing. Idle water exercise forgotten, droplets were flung across the floor as he slid off the couch and to his feet. Reflexively, he dried his hand on his jeans as he stepped lightly to the window.

Noticing all the shuffling corpses and screaming living people scrambling about, really, only one thing came to mind. "Oh…well would you look at that." Fingernails reflexively scraping across the ridge of his nose, he turned from the window. Stepping back to the couch, he sighed before leaning down and picking up the book that'd splayed itself open-faced on the floor.

Oh damn…he'd bent the spine.

The old lady would never let him live that down. She positively lived for her books.

Just…staring…at the book for several more breaths, he finally made up his mind.

…Breakfast burrito it was.

* * *

(Five Minutes Later)

Munching along, he opened the door to his small room. No point in locking the door. It was the second floor over a bookstore, owned by a wrinkled old lady who'd let him have the floor in exchange for working in her bookstore for her. She lived in a small house about a few blocks down, but had the space available above the store. About a year or so back, when he'd first drifted into town, not a whit to his name, she'd taken upon her grizzled old self to beat the literature into him. His internal clock was telling him that it was at least 9am, so she would doubtless be downstairs in the shop already. Down the hall, he shuffled down the narrow wood steps that would bottom-out in the back of the shop.

Nose wrinkling, he only hesitated for a moment before descending further.

Then he heard that rasping. A horrid sound that had nothing to do with breathing. Foot stopping on the last step, he took a better read on his surroundings. A few boxes had shifted or been upended, but the storeroom was still much the same.

His fist whipped out like a viper…yet striking with all the strength of a steel beam.

Through the wall itself.

Having met squishy wetness, he withdrew the limb. Eyes reflecting sadness, he stepped the rest of the way down into the first floor. Circling around the wall that lined the stairs, he looked down at the pulverized form of the old lady. Only recognizable from the neck down, her head had been pulped.

He felt sad.

Not for what he'd done though.

His nose told him well enough that she'd been dead for some time now. At least since early this morning. Even if she'd been walking around just moments ago. Apparently about to jump him if he had to guess.

"Sorry, old granny," he breathed. "Thanks, for everything, but I think it's time for me to go," giving a polite bow to what remained of the woman who'd shown him kindness.

CR-EK

Craning his neck, he looked back through the cracked doorway to the main area of the store.

* * *

There'd been two others in the shop. Its doors wide open, they'd wandered in from the street. It'd only taken him a moment to clear them out of the shop, locking the door in the end before heading back upstairs.

Griping to himself he reentered him room. "A year," he growled. "That's it?" A year of wonderfully boring peace? That was _all?_

It was a curse. It had to be. No way anyone else had this much shit fall on them.

Still…it'd been a pretty good year. Sleeping in on Saturdays ruled.

Having seen the situation from ground-level, he'd rightly assessed that things were _way_ too bad for the police. Yeah, he'd had enough time observing the local law enforcement to know that they wouldn't know shit about how to handle the walking dead. Probably why they weren't around. Shaking his head, he reminded himself of what needed to be done. Sulking, he padded into the adjacent bedroom.

Stopping at the closet, he slid the door open. It'd been a while since he'd put his things away. Reaching up to the top shelf, he reached around. Now where… Fingers brushed a coarse-materialed lump.

Bingo.

A dull scraping and he dragged out a sturdy pouch. All that remained of his original stock. Flipping it open, he took a new count on his supplies. "_Yeah, it's all there,_" he mused. He'd gotten so used to the relative peace that he'd stopped carrying around all his essentials, only a few pieces that he could hide in his everyday clothes. A kunai or two up his sleeves, and some wire either on his wrist or in his pocket. "_Still, might need some more._" Yeah, that would be easy enough. Even if he could find a source for his dwindling weapons, the quality would likely be substandard in this "modern age". Clipping it closed again, he threw it onto the bed. Reaching back in, this time to the base of the closet, he drew out a heavily reinforced pack.

"Time to skip town," he muttered grimly to himself, letting some gallows humor slip through his lips. "First it's zombies…then the property values drop." Changing into some more…sturdy clothing, losing the shorts in favor of some jeans, the cheap kind that were made strong over comfort and style, he got ready. Errant thoughts of the last year had his mind considering something else though.

"_I wonder how Saeko's doing?_" The interesting girl he'd met while working for old lady Haruka. She'd come in for a book on samurai, and he'd been the one to dig the book up, all the while maintaining small conversation with the bokken carrying young lady. He had, in a way, a fair bit of knowledge about the samurai given past experience. She came in every now and again. Browsing and talking.

Had all this reached her yet? There was a high school only a few miles down the road. So he guessed that would be a good place to start.

Okay, as far as plans went that was absolute shit, but it was still a plan. Lips pursed, his decision was made.

Clothes…Weapon pouch, albeit running low…some bare necessities…

He couldn't spare much room, but he threw in a book he'd borrowed from the bookstore below on his trip back upstairs. A collection of current maps.

The lightness of the pouch on his hip though bothered him almost immediately… Before he went looking for Saeko he needed to make a stop.


	2. New Friends, Headaches As Party Favors

Surviving The Dead

Disclaimer: Don't own Naruto or Highschool of the Dead

"Speech"  
"**Demonic/Pissed Speech**"  
"_Thought_"  
(Location/Time/etc.)

* * *

**Chapter 2: New Friends, Headaches As Party Favors**

(Fujimi High School, 2 Hours Later, 3rd Floor)

Hounded by the lurching, ragged mass of undead students and faculty, two teens ran together down the halls. They smiled for one another, each hiding the extent of their terror. At least until they'd been cornered. Reaching the stairs down to the first floor, meaning to leave the school as fast as they could, they found the stairs blocked. Ahead, they shuffled closer, while their pursuers had cut off any route of retreat. It really was a dead end. Irony.

Toshimi,17, a young woman with light-brown hair in a braid down to just below her shoulder, with two hanks hanging free on either side of her face, framing beautiful green eyes. Her above average breasts, easily c or d, catching more than a few eyes.

Misuzu, 17, Toshimi's constant companion, had shoulder-length black hair kept in a covered bun, two long locks hanging down from her temples to her collar bones, with rich brown eyes. Her breasts were not as large as her friends, but were high b to low c.

They were known affectionately throughout the school as the Inseparable Duo. Close friends, they were just about always in one another's company, even outside of school when they would go mall crawling. As such, their beauty and companionship had earned them, as a pair, a permanent spot among the school's most desirable. Not that there were many could say they had a chance with them as any would have to win the hearts of both girls in tandem. This also left the more jaded students thinking the two were secretly lesbians.

For a brief, very brief moment, Misuzu actually considered throwing her friend down the stairwell, and using _their_ frenzy over her as a chance to escape. A thought that immediately sickened her. Instinct answered the call and jerked Toshimi back by the wrist, pulling her out of reach of one of them that got too close. If this was her end…she wouldn't face it hurting her friend.

Backpedaling to the wall, the pair held one another, words lost to soft, fearful whimpers and sobbing.

Chance, it seemed, favored the pair for their friendship even in the face of adversity, not testing it any further. It hadn't the time to, courtesy of a chaotic variable.

FT-SLRCH!

FT-SLRCH!

FT-SLRCH!

FT-SLRCH!

All around the pair of trembling girls, the staggering, horrific bodies fell with equally sickening squelching sounds to the floor, unmoving. "Ooh, that was a close one," chuckling wryly. "You two need to be more careful." Walking up to them from the other end of the hall was a young man that both knew was not a member of Fujimi High. Any other time and either or both would have considered him handsome.

Tall, that's what he was. In the area of six-foot. Dressed casually, a pair of heavy jeans over black and white tennis shoes, and a grey long-sleeved shirt with the sleeves rolled up overtop a bright orange t-shirt, what stood out most were the bags he had around his waist and shoulders, and the duffle at his back. They didn't know it themselves but, with exception of the duffle, the bags were a variety used in construction to hold tools. In this case, they were loaded to the brim with nails, none smaller than six inches, several longer than that. And, all over his body, particularly on his limbs, strips of silver duct tape were wrapped, the heads of thick nails poking out. Bundles on his thighs and biceps held up as many nails as he'd been able to wrap without constricting his movement or tearing them off by accident.

This was his answer to a depleted weapons supply. It wasn't all that much different than throwing a kunai, the rod-shaped variety, just with some changes in the weight and wrist movement mid-throw. It wasn't pretty, but it was cheap, effective, and in great supply. All he'd had to do was raid a hardware store nearby the old lady's book shop and he'd been ready to go.

He'd grabbed a few other items while he was there, but now wasn't the time for them.

Stopping in front of the shell-shocked girls, "Hey, um, do you know where I can find a student? Saeko Busujima?" he asked casually. Misuzu and Toshimi just stared back at him with those big, round eyes. Somewhat at awe that he could be taking this…_Hell_…so calmly, but mostly because the continuing trauma hadn't let up enough for them to cope, not making it terribly easy to think clearly. Blind panic had locked out anything other than the rabbit-like responses of run, hide, or freeze in terror. They'd need to calm down a Hell of a lot before freaking out even registered as an option.

When they didn't immediately answer, "Meh, I knew it was a reach," shrugging, ready to write off this school and look for the next.

"…Busujima-san?" Toshimi answered hesitantly, the blonde's expression perking up at mention of the name. "Sh-She's in the class ahead of us."

"We don't…We don't know where she is," Misuzu finished. For a moment, either girl wondered if this news might prompt him to leave them behind.

"I guess I'd better cover the school then." Smiling comfortingly down at them, "I wouldn't recommend going around without a weapon of some sort… If you want you can stick with me. I promise not to let you die," giving a grin paired with a thumbs-up.

To either of the girls, it looked and sounded absolutely corny…but remarkably reassuring. Besides, their options weren't just limited. There _were_ no other options, outside of facing the hordes on their own, and that hadn't gone well the first time.

"Stick close to me," he reiterated, stalking down the hall.

* * *

Luck hadn't been with him. All he'd found since rescuing the "little rabbits" as he liked to think of them were these walking corpses. Each got a nail to the head, but they were coming out of the proverbial woodworks. Strategically, entering through the third-floor window was sound. He could work his way down from the top and clear the school out. Unfortunately, it also meant that if his target wasn't on said top-floor, he would have to go that long route assuredly.

Why couldn't this have been one of those really private schools that he'd heard about? The ones with very small numbers of students, and, as such, were only one-story in height.

The rabbits clung to his shadow like a life raft. He supposed it was only natural given how people in this world didn't normally see things in this spectrum of wrong.

Okay, he couldn't say he was accepting it all that well either. His world's approximation was the Edo Tensei, and it was a Hell of a lot better in comparison. Experience just left him better at adapting to wrongness of this level than just about anyone else.

* * *

After picking his way through the shuffling, undead masses, he made it from the third floor down to the second without overly endangering his wards. The latest walker dropped from a nail to the skull.

"DIE!DIE!DIE!"

His first instinct was to reload, both hands filling, nails twixt each finger, four to a hand.

At the horrified screaming, he rounded the corner in a blur, ready. A group of survivors, one of whom was very familiar, all delving out permanent death to the risen, while one struggled against her undead attacker, using an electric drill to core out its forehead. Ineffectively though, since it was still looming down over her, splattering her with gore churned up by the drill.

He did the first thing, well _one_ of the first things, that came to mind at the sight before him. Plucking the bright red fire extinguisher from the wall next to him, he sent it hurtling down the hall like a missile.

THONG!

It hit with just as much force, too. The impact was enough to break its neck. Its head would've likely ended up limply hanging from its shoulders if not for the fact that the force of the blow was enough to knock it off its feet.

The abused fire extinguisher, its momentum spent, clattered to the floor, in a dull, metallic clunking. Not that the sound mattered given how the girl had been shrieking just seconds ago.

Silence, relative silence, fell, all the walkers having been dealt with, the ruined bodies littering the linoleum. If not for the seriousness, he might've cracked a joke about the custodial staff pitching a fit. Not that he was all that serious. Having recognized one among the crowd, and finally having a break to do something about it… "Hey, Saeko-chan!" he greeted cheerily.

Her face was mostly blank, with exception to confused disbelief. Bloody bokken angled down, dripping a steady stream of almost pitch-black blood drip to the floor, the kendo club president regarded the blonde with familiarity and mild surprise. "Naruto-san?" Really, not much short of an expletive riddled statement regarding his presence in this battlefield came to mind given the situation. Still, she managed a cleaner, more composed response after another moment's thought. "What are you doing here?"

Grinning casually, "I came looking for my friend." Really, in his mind that was reason enough to do anything.

Saeko regarded him with an arched brow, "I never told you where I went to school."

He shrugged, smiling weakly. "Actually, I chose this school at random. Funny how life works out, neh?" Meanwhile, the bustiest member of their party, along with the brunette girl tended to the shell-shocked pinkette.

"Thanks for that," the dark-haired teen with the bloody aluminum bat offered, letting out a deep, relaxed breath…while he had the chance. He likely wouldn't have the chance any other time soon.

"No problem. Name's Naruto. I'm a, uh, acquaintance of Saeko-chan."

"He is...a friend," Saeko corrected, getting a broad grin from the blonde at her open acceptance. Talking mostly to the others, as students they would know, "I take it you're all familiar with Nurse Marikawa? I am Saeko Busujima. Third-year, Class A." All with a serene smile and pleasant expression across her face.

"Takashi Komuro. Class 2B," the bat-wielder answered in turn.

Introductions continued from person to person, more often than not including personal bits regarding how they recognized one another. Taking a step to the side, Naruto alerted them all to the two girls that'd been huddling behind him for the last few minutes. "And these are my new friends that I found. Um, I haven't gotten their names yet."

"Toshimi…Niki."

"M-Misuzu Ichijou."

Even with the immediate fighting done, they still shook.

Saya looked about ready to club the nearest person for the blasé attitude they were passing around. "Are you out of your fucking minds?!" This was it, her breaking point. "How fucking crazy do you have to be to stand around talking and joking at a time like this?!"

"Takagi?" Takashi began, stepping toward her. "What're you talking-"

"Don't you mock me!" she snarled, recoiling from his approach. "I didn't need anyone to help me! I'm a genius! If I wanted to, no-one would ever beat me!" She was practically hyperventilating now.

It was after Saeko intervened, her strong hand coming to rest on Saya's shoulder that the girl calmed, but not as a result. No, it was the sudden sight of herself in the trophy case mirror, spattered by blood, that froze her. And outrage, lashing out at anyone and everyone, gave way to its polar opposite. "I…I got so dirty. Mom 'll be so disappointed. She'll have to take it to the cleaners…" Tears sprung to her eyes, her shoulders beginning to shake. Saeko wrapped her arms around the girl as her legs went limp, supporting her and slowly carrying them both to the floor as Saya vented, sobbing into her shoulder.

It wasn't very productive, but it was better to get those pent up emotions out there before they could fester and _really_ snap.

* * *

(2nd Floor Staff Room)

Barricading themselves in the second-floor faculty lounge, all present scattered through the room, decompressing. Toshimi and Niki huddled together on the couch, but anyone could see that they weren't as stressed as when they'd been exposed in the hallways.

"_Wow,_" Naruto thought, appraising the environs as he sat against the sizeable desk, designed apparently to fit several teachers. "_Technology aside…not all that different from the teachers' room at the Academy._" He would know. He'd broken in there once for the placement of a particularly potent stink-bomb.

Totally worth the two weeks of detention…and the tirade from Mizuki.

"_Why're the pinkettes always so…volatile?_" he idly wondered, gaze passing over the attached bathroom where he could see her bent down over the sink, washing off as much blood as she was able. Resilient as he was, and the comparable difference in strength aside, he was not about to voice such a comment. Call it experience-justified wisdom. You could also call it paranoia.

On the others side of the table, Saeko sat, catching her breath. Her bokken leaning against the table, just within reach. Next to her, collapsed pitifully over the tabletop, was the resident adult. Her attitude and personality left him wondering about that particular judgment though. She was certainly…bubbly. He refused to comment, even in his head, on her…body. That was a chain reaction starter, that was. Any thoughts in that direction would be rather difficult to force aside. He would grace the woman with one opinion for now: she was stacked.

Suffice it to say…Man's man that he was, Jiraiya would've _swooned_ in her presence.

Going from person to person, Rei passed out bottles of water that she'd…pilfered from the room's refrigerator. She favored keeping their strength up over being polite and leaving the water for teachers.

And, just to his immediate right were the only other males in their group. Takashi and Kohta, the two teens stacking anything that wasn't bolted down in front of the doors. It wouldn't make a difference given how the doors slid side to side for opening, but he let them have their coping moment. Plus, he doubted the dead morons even knew how to open a door anymore.

Their little project complete, after spending a moment to bask in accomplishment, Hirano walked over to the bathroom to check on Saya. "Takagi? Are you alright?" Coming in just at the right moment to catch her sliding a pair of previously unknown glasses up on her nose. "Glasses?" An unintelligent utterance, but then he was caught a little off-guard.

At first, surprised at someone coming into the bathroom to check on her, that shifted into annoyance at the pointless question. "So what? My contacts keep slipping out!"

"Sensei," Takashi breathed, sliding to the floor, his back to the wall, accepting a bottle of water from Rei. "Do you have your car keys on you?" The blonde woman lifted her head off the desktop, considering before catching on. Grabbing up her bag, she started to fish around inside.

"Unless you drive a van or something, there's not much point," Naruto advised, seeing the problem with that thought from the start. "Take a headcount, man. There're nine of us. Anything smaller just won't do." He didn't want to broach the topic of not needing a car himself. Not the time to have to argue that point.

Fishing her keys out just then, the blonde's look of accomplishment fell, "Oh…it's a compact."

Saeko looked to the windows, an alternative already coming to mind. "What about the school's minibus? The one we use for club activities and field trips?" Its keys were still hanging on the rack behind the door, spotted courtesy of the friendly label just over them. The bus had roughly twenty-four seats, more than enough space for their needs. And, it wasn't very big, meaning it would be easier for an untrained driver than a full-on bus.

Rushing to the window, Kohta scanned the parking lot. "…It's still here!"

"Okay, so, now that we have the bus…where are we going?" the curvy nurse asked. A fair and important question.

"This is city-wide," Naruto informed. "In case you didn't already know. I went through about a mile of those things before I got here." He saw the dread in their faces at realizing how _not_ isolated this was, but it had to be said.

"Um, Naruto?"

"Hm?" blue eyes casting themselves on the curvy nurse.

"Are you a student here?" Not a question he'd been expecting.

"Nope," he answered simply. At least she wasn't using honorifics. He really hated that system of social etiquette.

"Oh. Okay." That really was all that she'd been curious of, having not recognized him and wondering if she was simply being forgetful.

"He works at a bookstore down the road," Saeko informed.

"So, you came all this way?" the nurse questioned, respectfully awed.

"Hey, Naruto Uzumaki doesn't back down," he stated boldly, offering a confident grin and a thumbs-up, really only getting a response from the nurse. He got no respect from the other teens. "I knew Saeko went to a school nearby, and wasn't about to skip town without making certain the people I knew were safe." Though "safe" was a word in question these days. "As it turns out, my luck is still one-hundred percent awesome. First school I picked, and here she is."

"Luck… Yeah," Takagi growled, stepping out of the bathroom. Another word in question, current events taken into consideration.

"All I had to do was load up on the essentials and I was good to go," patting one of the bags he'd unslung from his shoulder and plopped on the table. Having taken a look already, if not assuming from the many nails taped across his body, he got a few looks of disbelief. Sure, he'd gotten this far, but none of them had actually seen him do anything besides throw the fire extinguisher.

"What? You just stab them in the heads?"

"Please. Only suckers have to get that close." Reaching into a bag, he withdrew a nail six inches in length. Flipping it between his fingers, his hand shot out, the nail flying from his fingers to embed in the wood cabinet just under the window.

It buried up to almost half its length.

"Wow, that's amazing!" Marikawa exclaimed.

Kohta laughed, throwing up an approving thumbs-up, "Good enough for me," surprised by the throw, but glad of another member of their group able to take _them_ down from a distance. He could see the big picture in regards to weapons and their survival.

"Yeah, I used to pay my rent by beating chumps at dart." True. That was how he'd paid for most of his meals, too, before meeting the old lady. "Learned to throw knives, too…mostly just to see if I could. Throwing a nail's not that much different." If anyone held fault with his tale, they didn't voice it. It wasn't a lie…except by omission. He left a Hell of a lot out, but it wasn't anything they needed to know. At least not yet.

"And you work at a book store," Takashi deadpanned.

Naruto grinned wildly. "You'd be amazed what you can learn from a book."

Okay, so…scary.

"Well, that's all fun to know, but can we return to the life-ending crisis now?" Saya growled moodily. "Where _do_ we go? If this is that wide-spread-"

"Don't take my word for it," Naruto muttered, dramatically glum.

Pointedly ignoring the sulking moron, "As I was saying, if it is that wide-spread, then places we'd normally consider safe are likely not. Not anymore."

"Still, we need to get our families," Takashi proposed from where he sat. "We'll stop at everyone's house, going by closest to farthest. Then, when that's all done with, we'll look for someplace safe."

"Someplace isolated would be best, y'know?" Naruto mused thoughtfully, absentmindedly falling back onto his old verbal tick.

Toweling away at the blood stains on her uniform, Saya gave it up and threw the towel back into the bathroom. "There's bound to be someplace," she reasoned. "This many people freaking out? It'll be just like for earthquakes and other natural disasters. The police and special forces will have set up emergency shelters."

As if to hammer home the true depth of their situation, Rei's sudden shaking brought their attention to the muted television mounted on the wall. A second later and Saeko resolved the sound issue, pulling the remote out from atop the stack of books on the desk. It was a reporter, calmly, if serious, summing up the situation on the outside.

Calm.

She got as far as confirming the possibility of government aid to the people before Hell found her.

In the background, an ambulance had been loading up a pair of gurneys with full body-bags. And then body-bags started to move. Guns and horrified shrieking followed, the reporter disappearing from the frame, her mic forgotten, all leading up to pained screams and an all too familiar rasping groan.

The channel cut out a second later, the feed returning to the studio.

The staff room was silent, and by that point minds were too abuzz to even pay attention to the obvious excuses.

"They don't want to incite a panic," Saya explained.

Naruto wanted to state the truth, plain as day as it was, but Rei beat him to it. "It's a little late for that, isn't it?" Using far less sarcasm than the crass blonde would've.

Pushing her glasses back up the bridge of her nose, Saya sent her a knowing glance. Then, in as calm a tone as she could manage, explained the path of chaos as it would inevitably lead to the collapse of social order. "And how do you propose we retaliate against the walking dead?"

Changing the channels from local news to CNN, a different, darker picture was painted. It wasn't just Japan. Cities around the world were described to be in disarray. _They_ were never mentioned, but there wasn't a one of them didn't know what all this was being caused by. _They_ were all over the globe.

"This morning…when I was on the net, everything was fine," Kohta murmured weakly, at a loss.

"Only a few hours," Rei gasped. "How can the world go to Hell that fast?"

Naruto politely held his tongue to many of their rhetorical questions.

The brunette shook her head. "No, there has to be _someplace_ safe. There has to. There has to be a way to come back from this! Things have to be able to return to normal, right?"

"Fat chance." Ironically, Naruto and Saya both answered in sync. Mostly. Naruto had added a choice curse amidst the other two words; the only difference to their retorts.

"Jeez, Takagi, you don't have to be so blunt," Takashi snapped, but without any real bite.

Ignoring the echo, "This is worldwide. A pandemic, got it?" turning away, her hands up in sarcastic resignation. "There's nothing we _can_ do. We're talking about an explosive infection all over the world."

"Like the flu?"

The pinkette nodded to Takashi. "Spanish Flu, 1918. It was the same. People worried that the Bird Flu would end up having the same effect. Everyone knows the flu can be bad, right? Really bad?" Nods. "Out of the 600 million individuals Spanish Flu affected, it killed 500 million. That's over eighty percent. Remember the panic Swine Flu caused? Square that."

"Not to disagree, but…" In a moment of intelligence, Nurse Shizuka offered her own comparison. "It could be like the Black Death then…from the 14th century."

Saya looked down, grim, but not shoving away the comparison. "One third of the population of Europe…dead. You're smarter than you look."

Situation being what it was, Naruto was more than a little certain that this girl did not have all that many friends. Not with an attitude like that.

"Yeah? So how'd it stop."

Naruto had a feeling he wouldn't like the answer.

Surprising everyone again, Shizuka continued the tutorial. "There are a lot of theories. A big one is that once enough people die out there aren't enough people to pass around the disease."

"Yeah…one problem with that," Naruto pointed out. "The poor stiffs don't stay dead. Well, not at first, anyway. Unless someone gives them that finishing blow, they can keep on infecting people. All it takes is one bite."

Saeko sighed, crossing her arms. "Meaning the same rules don't apply as they would any other infectious disease."

Finger raising suddenly, the blonde bombshell smiled, hopeful. "They're dead though. Once the weather warms up, their flesh will rot, and once it's gone they won't be able to move."

"And how long will that take?" Saeko wondered aloud for them all.

"In the Summer…Let's see…" Counting off on her fingers, "For the Summer, three weeks. The Winter, several months."

"So, for the immediate future…bone-age," Naruto sighed.

Kohta began reloading his nail gun. "Then there's the question of _will_ they rot."

"Corpses walking around aren't normal," Saya reiterated for everyone, taking up his meaning. "Worst case scenario, it could take forever for them to decompose, or they might not at all."

"Finding our families comes first," Saeko reminded, bringing them back to the original purpose of their discussion. "We can't lose ourselves to panic, or we'll never survive. But we have to act. Not doing so, just staying holed up here, could be just as if not more lethal."

"So, we need to get out of the building and across the parking lot," Saya mumbled, hand cupping her chin as she thought it out, much more vocal about it than the others.

"Why don't we just go out the windows?" Naruto questioned, as if it were the obvious route. Though, to him it was, for many reasons.

"We're on the second floor," Takakshi reminded him.

Yeah, he almost forgot how…weak…these people were in comparison. No arrogance, truth. Even the freshest genin and even a few academy students would've looked at the height and jumped without a second thought. Jerking his thumb at the supply closet, "There's bound to be something in the supply closet. An extension cord maybe?" the blonde proposed.

Saya glared haughtily at him. "Are you nuts? Not all of us have the physical strength to go that route." In fact, the only ones likely capable of such were said annoying blonde, Takashi, Rei, and Busujima. What about the rest of them. Miss Marakawa, Kohta, the inseparable duo, and herself would not be likely to follow that route without undue peril.

Naruto thought it over before nodding, conceding the point.

Arms over her chest, though under her sizeable bust, Saeko took the floor. "Which means there's really only one option left to us."

"Right," Saya agreed. "The front door." Stomachs sank. "We've got to get down the hall to the stairs, down them, and out the doors. Then we have to make it to the bus. All without attracting _their_ attention."

"No pressure," Takashi exhaled coarsely, palming his forehead, frustrated. Screw thinking up a safe place to go, they had to survive leaving the school first!

* * *

AN/ Typed this up over two days, so forgive if sounds a little rough. Hadn't intended to work on it, but felt the inspiration flowing to write a little and ended up getting carried away enough for a solid 10 to 11 page chapter. Not too ashamed to say that I'm not as dedicated to this story as I am to others, so while I do try to maintain a certain level of writing, this one's more like a passing fancy.

Also, made a little headway on another chapter to my Naruto x Ult.X story.


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